creativity and chemicals

creativity and chemicals

Claire Wolfe has been working on a movie script, and in an effort to get over a creative wall, made an exception to her rule against writing while impaired.

I can confirm that a chemically-induced altered state can be extremely helpful in creative endeavours. I have been programming computers for 2/3 of my life, and at a rough estimate I would say that about half of the code I have written over my lifetime has been written under the influence of alcohol. Not just a little tipsy mind you, or even just a little buzz on... but absolutely shitfaced, staggering, falling-over drunk.

The nature of computer programming being what it is, and in particular in my preferred programming languages (the many flavours of Assembly Language), one simply cannot turn out crap and expect it to work. Even so, when programming while impaired I turned out some absolutely amazing code (did I mention how humble I am?), such as the printed circuit board CAD program I wrote for my Commodore Vic-20 about a decade ago (which even today works better and faster for me on that old 333kHz computer than any PC-based CAD program).

Of course, nothing comes without a price; in the case of alcohol, that price is one's health. Had I not stopped drinking altogether seven years ago (as of June 27th), I would very likely not be here right now.
It was an either-or proposition for me: either lose that little bit of extra "creative juice" or lose my life.

Now I just pray that I never get writer's block.